The Richmond Rage were a women’s professional basketball team that lasted for just one season in the American Basketball League. The ABL was formed in 1995 with plans for a fall 1996 launch, hoping to draft off of the platform of the 1996 Atlanta summer Olympics and to get the jump on the WNBA, a rival startup backed by the National Basketball Association.

The Rage had a terrifically talented roster, including former University of Virginia star and Olympic gold medalist Dawn Staley (guard), and forward Adrienne Goodson of Old Dominion. Staley and Goodson would both earn 1st Team All-ABL honors, while 6′ 4″ center Taj McWilliams was named 2nd team All-League.

One curiosity on the Rage roster was the presence of U.S. Olympic track & field legend Jackie Joyner-Kersee. The 34-year old medaled in her fourth and final summer Olympics in Atlanta in 1996 just months before the American Basketball League made its debut. Kersee was an All-Pac 10 performer at UCLA in the early 1980’s, but hadn’t played competitive basketball in over a decade when she signed with the Rage in 1996. Kersee made 17 appearances off the bench during the 1996-97 season, but her skills had eroded and she averaged just 0.9 points per game at forward.

Despite the individual talent, the Rage didn’t really put it all together in the regular season, finishing with a modest 21-19 record. But the Rage caught fire for the playoffs, and upset the Western Conference champion Colorado Xplosion to earn a championship series date with the ABL’s best team, the Columbus Quest. Richmond took a 2-1 lead in the best-of-five series, but was unable to close out the Quest. Columbus took Games 4 & 5 on back-to-back nights on March 9th and 10th, 1997 to win the ABL’s first championship title.

Off the court, the Rage averaged 3,139 fans per game for 20 home dates split between the Richmond Coliseum and the Robins Center at the University of Richmond. That ranked 6th out of the ABL’s 8 teams, but wasn’t far off the league average of 3,536 per game. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the ABL lost an estimated $500,000 – $600,000 operating the Rage in Richmond during its first season.

The ABL was a single-entity organization, which meant that all teams and player contracts were owned centrally by the league. In July 1997, with ticket sales for the second season lagging in Richmond and the league in dire need of more alluring media markets for sponsors and television partners, the ABL moved the Rage franchise to Philadelphia.

The Philadelphia Rage never regained the form of their first season in Virginia, falling to last place in 1997-98 with a 13-31 record. The league’s third season in 1998-99 was cut off abruptly when the ABL shut down three days before Christmas in 1998 and later declared bankruptcy.

The Seattle Reign were a cleverly named women’s professional basketball team that competed for two-and-a-half seasons in the American Basketball League (1996-1998). The Reign had a modest but dedicated fan base that consistently filled the 4,500-seat Mercer Arena to three quarters of capacity, creating a better atmosphere than many ABL clubs that played in oversized buildings. The Reign also played occasional home dates at KeyArena, home of the NBA’s Seattle Sonics.

The ABL was founded in late 1995 with the aim of capitalizing on the expected strong performance of the United States women’s basketball team at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. The NBA was backing a rival start-up – the WNBA – which would fill dates at NBA arenas during the slow summer months and wouldn’t start until 1997. As expected, the Americans won Gold in Atlanta. Thanks to an earlier start in October 1996 and more generous salaries and benefits, the ABL initially lured the majority of the Olympic champions to their league.

The Reign used their 1st round draft pick in 1996 to select 29-year old Venus Lacy, a 6′ 4″ center on the U.S. Olympic team. Lacy signed with the ABL and was expected to be the Reign’s dominant presence. Instead, she had a cursed campaign that included an arthroscopic knee surgery in midseason, followed less than two months later by a serious car accident which ended her season. Lacy was shipped to the ABL’s Long Beach Stingrays expansion franchise after the season and was never a major factor for the Reign. Seattle finished the ABL’s inaugural season 17-23 and out of the playoffs.

Prior to the ABL’s second season in 1997-98, the Reign added two outstanding rookies to the roster. Kate Starbird came out of Stanford University as the all-time leading scorer for that powerhouse program and as the Naismith Award winner as the nation’s College Player-of-the-Year. Starbird also had Washington state ties as a graduate of Lakes High School in Lakewood. The 22-year old’s three-year ABL deal came with a base salary of $150,000 plus perhaps another $100,000 in endorsements, which The Seattle Times speculated was the richest contract in the women’s game at the time.

6′ 1″ forward Shalonda Enis out of the University of Alabama was less heralded than Starbird, but ended up more impactful, finishing 5th in the ABL in scoring (18.0 ppg) and winning league Rookie-of-the-Year honors.

Despite the arrival of Enis and Starbird, the Reign finished last in the Western Conference at 15-29.

The Reign returned for a third season in October 1998, but by this time the ABL was financially hobbled by extravagant salaries, lack of sponsor & television interest, and competition from the far wealthier (but lower paying) WNBA. The Reign played only 15 games of the 1997-98 season before the ABL ran out of money and closed its doors on December 22, 1998.

The Reign played 49 regular season home dates during their two-and-a-half year history and averaged 3,374 fans per game over that time. During the Reign’s debut season in 1996-97 they sold 1,155 season tickets according to The Seattle Times.

Professional women’s basketball returned to Seattle in 2000 with the arrival of the Seattle Storm expansion team in the WNBA. The Storm have since won two WNBA championships in 2004 and 2010.

In 2013, Seattle’s new entry in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) gave new life to the “Reign” nickname, adopting the identity of Seattle Reign FC. Reign FC owner Bill Predmoreacknowledged that the name was in part a tribute to the original Reign basketball team.

The Philadelphia Rage were a women’s professional basketball team that operated for a season-and-a-half in the American Basketball League. The franchise started out in Virginia as the Richmond Rage during the ABL’s 1996-97 inaugural season and advanced to the 1997 ABL Championship Series, losing to the Columbus Quest.

In July 1997 the Rage relocated to Philadelphia due to poor ticket sales and the small size of the media market in Richmond. In their first season in Philly, the Rage split their games between the Palestra at the University of Pennsylvania and the brand new 10,000-seat Apollo at Temple University. Attendance in Philadelphia was notably lousy. During the 1997-98 season, Philadelphia ranked 8th out of the ABL’s 9 teams with average crowds of 3,238 for 22 home dates. For the aborted 1998-99 season, when the Rage played solely at the Apollo, attendance was far and away the weakest in the league, with only 1,495 per game showing up for six dates.

The 1997-98 Rage club was terrible on the court, despite the presence of three women’s game legends on the roster in Adrienne Goodson, Taj McWilliams and Philly native Dawn Staley. The Rage finished in last place in their division with a 13-31 record.

As the 1998-99 season began, the Rage seemed poised to turn things around, despite the loss of Dawn Staley, who jumped to the ABL’s much stronger rival, the Women’s National Basketball Association, during the offseason. Hall-of-Famer Anne Donovan was the new coach and had the Rage off to a 9-5 start before the league ran out of money just before Christmas. The league had kept the true severity of its financial pressures quiet and many players, fans and employees were caught off guard when the ABL abruptly closed its doors on December 22, 1998.

==Key Figures==

Anne Donovan (Head Coach)

Teresa Edwards

Adrienne Goodson

Taj McWilliams

Dawn Staley

==In Memoriam==

Rage guard Katrina Price died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on January 18, 1998, less than a month after the ABL folded. She was 23.

The Lasers split their home games between the San Jose Event Center, where they held the majority of their games, and occasional dates at the larger San Jose Arena. The Lasers averaged 3,181 fans per game in 1996-97, but picked up considerably the next season to 4,773. The Lasers drew 4,447 through seven home dates in 1998-99 before the ABL abruptly shut down and declared bankruptcy on December 22, 1998 midway through the league’s third season.

On the court, the Lasers posted losing records during both full ABL seasons, but still managed to sneak into the playoffs both years. Their best performance was in the 1997-98 campaign, when they advanced to the playoff semi-finals before losing to the eventual champions, the Columbus Quest.

The ABL was a single-entity organization with league ownership of franchises and player contracts. Similar to Major League Soccer, the ABL did allow investors to purchase operating rights to individual franchises, although few teams found such investors. The Lasers were an exception. Venture capitalists Joe Lacob of Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield & Byers made an equity investment in the ABL in the spring of 1997 and later purchased operating rights to the Lasers shortly before the team’s second season got under way.

Following the demise of the ABL, Lacob became a minority partner in the Boston Celtics in 2006. In 2010, a Lacob-led group acquired ownership of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors for $450 million.

The Noise were an expansion club for the ABL’s third and final season in the fall/winter of 1998-99. Two clubs were added to the league, with the Chicago Condors being the other new entry. The timing of the expansion was rather curious, as the single-entity ABL was in serious financial distress and was simultaneously contracting clubs in Atlanta and Long Beach and imposing salary cuts across the league. Former Chicago Condors GM Denise Hodgeslater told Lena Williams of The New York Times that league CEO Gary Cavalli called her on the day of the press conference to introduce the Condors to Chicago to tell her the league was out of business, only to call back moments later and say everything was fine and to proceed with the event.

The Noise signed a couple of players of local repute, including former University of Tennessee All-American point guard Michelle Marciniak and 1996 U.S. Olympic gold medalist Venus Lacy, a 6′ 4″ center originally from Chattanooga.

The Noise debuted on November 6th, 1998 with a 84-67 loss on the road at Chicago. The team flew back to Tennessee for their home debut the following evening against the league’s two-time defending champions, the Columbus Quest. An announced crowd of 5,052 showed up at Nashville Municipal Auditorium to check out the Noise. The team dropped its second straight, 84-76.

The Noise started the season notably weak, losing their first seven games. Attendance was grim. Five of the next six home games drew less than 2,100 fans to the Municipal Auditorium. The team began to rally on the court in late November, but by this point the ABL itself was in its death throes. Starved for national sponsorship dollars and without a significant television deal, the league abruptly terminated its season on December 22, 1998 and declared bankruptcy shortly thereafter.

The Noise played their final game, an 80-73 home victory against the Seattle Reign on December 20, 1998. The club’s final record was 4-11 at the time of the shutdown.